


From Your Lips He Drew

by dizzy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Grief, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 17:23:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1787083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At eighteen, Stiles is an orphan... and Derek is there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Your Lips He Drew

All of the nagging and healthy cooking and bursting-with-love worry doesn't do a bit of good in the face of a stray bullet. 

They come to get Stiles out of school at half past ten on a Tuesday morning. He knows something's wrong. He's seen that expression before. It's not one you readily forget. 

He's fresh turned eighteen and he's an orphan. 

* 

Scott stays with him for the next week. They stay up late talking, exhausting heart to hearts. Alison's death is still fresh and this is just - it's too much. Scott's seen and lost so many people in his periphery in the past couple of years that it's hard to tap that same sense of devastation. 

He's learned what Stiles learned with his mother's death: that life goes on. But Scott's also learned appreciation for the people that are around him, and he proves that to Stiles unwaveringly. 

Scott's mom wants Stiles to stay with her for a while. 

Stiles doesn't. He wants to be in his own house. He wants to be surrounded by his own things. He thinks, sickeningly, of Derek in the old Hale house, that weird obsession he had with living amongst the remnants. Stiles kind of got it back then but now the empathy curdles in his gut so sour he could almost choke on it. 

Derek is the last person Stiles wants to have anything in common with, not when it comes to this, but he can't change this. 

He's old enough to live by himself. His dad left him everything. 

They never did have that conversation about student loans. Stiles kept putting it off. Now... well, he's not rich, but he won't have to stress too much over college. 

Fuck. His dad will never see him graduate. 

"Go on," Stiles says, on a Sunday morning five days after The Day. He lets Scott hug him extra hard and then shoves him out the door. 

When the sound of Scott's car is distant in his ear, Stiles drops to the ground with his back against the door and cries. 

*

Derek shows up not long after that. 

He doesn't say anything. He knows up with a bag of burgers and curly fries and they sit across from each other at the kitchen table eating in silence. 

When he's done eating, Derek gets up like he's going to leave. 

"Thanks," Stiles mutters, head in his hands. He doesn't look up until he hears the door shut. 

* 

Derek comes more and more often. He brings food, sometimes groceries. He's taking care of Stiles and Stiles doesn't know why but he's almost unbearably grateful to be able to close his eyes in the house and hear something besides silence. 

It's not like he's pretending Derek is his dad. Stiles knows fully well who is in the house with him. He's guilty of many things, but facing reality isn't one of them. 

It's just... it's a comfort. It's good to not be alone. 

They watch television sometimes. They sit side by side, shoulders touching. Stiles almost always falls asleep first, but sometimes he wakes up first, too. He'll wake and stare at the man beside him, the macro lens view of stubble and the crease of the corner of Derek's mouth. 

Stiles isn't sure he's ever spent so much time just staring at someone. Sure, he devoted countless hundreds of hours of his life to waxing poetic over Lydia Martin, but he never saw past the surface of her and by the time he did the rose-colored glasses were gone. What he knew of Lydia was dusted on powder and scented lipgloss, the swish of her hair and the plucked shape of her brows lifted in startlingly hot disdain. 

Lydia was about as real to him in actual life as she was in his jerk off fantasies, he just didn't know it at the time. He's a little bit older now, just a little bit wiser - just old and wise enough to know that he's a fucking idiot and has no idea what he's doing. His priorities are shifting without his permission or intervention, and they've settled in a place with no room for someone like Lydia... no room for fantasy. 

Of course, Lydia isn't the only person circling him and his mind in the past year. There are others, things that kept him up at night with tingly anticipation before life kicked him in the balls, but they don't matter too much to him right now either. The idea of being titillated over adrenaline-fueled makeouts or the girl that offered him a handjob after lacrosse practice is non-existent. 

What Stiles wants right now is... well, he's not really even sure in what context, but he thinks he's looking at it. He wants someone he can close his eyes and just be around. When he looks at Derek he feels like he's looking at a real person. A person he can't decipher, someone he can't predict, but someone he somehow at the heart of it thinks he can lean on and won't disappear. 

Suddenly, that means a lot. 

*

He has nightmares. 

Of course he has nightmares. 

He's not sure when Derek makes the transition from leaving before bed, to sleeping on the couch, to sleeping beside Stiles' bed. 

If he were a better person he'd tell Derek to leave. 

If he were the person he was a year ago he'd just make fun of Derek. 

But he's neither, and he clings to Derek's hand with not an ounce of shame. 

*

Derek must get something out of it, too. 

The more time they spend alone together the more Stiles sees the sides of Derek he's never seen before. 

A stray faucet hose starts a water fight in the kitchen. It might be the first time Stiles has laughed in a month. It might be the first time he's ever heard Derek laugh. 

They talk about family, too. 

Stiles talks about his dad all the time. He talks about his dad in school papers, to Scott, to Scott's mom, to the therapist that they insisted he see. Stiles won't forget his family and it's like sharing the memories keeps them alive, keeps that spark burning. 

The surprising part is that Derek talks sometimes, too. 

*

"So do you just like, live here now?" Stiles asks. 

They're eating brownies. 

Brownies they made. 

Together. 

As in, Stiles and Derek. Who baked together. 

The brownies are fucking good. Derek can bake, who knew? 

(Derek's mother, apparently, who realized he would tail her in the kitchen and would haul him up onto the counter and let him help her. If hearts could fucking melt... well, Stiles is a sucker for mom stories, for obvious reasons.) 

"Do you want me to go?" Derek asks in a too-level voice. 

Stiles has a sharp spike of insight here. It's one of those moments where he thinks if he says the wrong thing he could break something between them, maybe break something in Derek. 

He won't, though. He's not sure if this is Derek latching onto pain he can identify with or what but Stiles is grateful for it either way. 

"No," he says, breaking the last brownie in half and handing Derek part of it. (The smaller part. He's got his limits, okay.) "I want you to stay." 

Derek looks down at the treat in his hand like he's not sure how it got there. That befuddled puppy expression is doing all sorts of things to Stiles he doesn't want to think too much about. 

*

Stiles only has a week left of school before winter break. He's pretty sure he flunks most of his tests, but he's likeable and - the big kicker - people are sympathetic. He'll pass, probably even get A's. 

Scott and Mrs. McCall want him to spend Christmas with them. 

Stiles won't. It feels like abandoning his dad, and besides - he won't be alone.


End file.
